Nabucco Launches Prequalification Process For Long Lead Items

Nabucco Launches Prequalification Process For Long Lead Items

Nabucco Gas Pipeline International on 23 April announced that it was launching a prequalification tender for long lead items including pipes, valves and bends for the construction of its planned 3,300km natural gas pipeline. The prequalification deadline is 17 May and the first tender package – worth €3.5bn – will be opened at the end of July. The Nabucco consortium plans to make a final investment decision on the €7.9bn project during the fourth quarter of this year. Construction is scheduled to begin at the end of 2011 and first flow is due in 2014 with an initial throughput of 8-10 bcm/year. Full capacity of 31 bcm/y is expected to be reached in 2018. A statement released by Nabucco said that interest by potential suppliers has been extensive from the outset. Between 200,000 and 250,000 line pipes, each 12.5ms long and 56-inch diameter, will be needed. Technical prequalification is to be performed by an independent third party.

Nabucco also said in the statement that the selection of the route corridor has been completed for the first phase of the project and the right of way and permission process for the environmental and social assessment and construction permit in the Nabucco transit countries is currently in progress. The Nabucco pipeline will begin in eastern Turkey and run through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, terminating at the Central European Gas Hub in Baumgarten.

The project has yet to secure a source of supply, but company officials say they expect first gas to be of Iraqi origin. Differences between Turkey and Azerbaijan over the supply of natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz Stage 2 development have become bogged down by the politics of Turkey and Armenia’s so far failed rapprochement, as Azerbaijan resents the effort in view of its ongoing dispute with Armenia over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian enclave. Turkish energy experts have told MEES that in this atmosphere no progress is expected on the gas pipeline issue – including Nabucco and the ‘Interconnectors’ before the end of the year.

Nabucco is supported by the EU and the US. Five of its partners – the countries through which the pipeline will pass – signed an intergovernmental agreement on the governing and operation of the pipeline last July and ratification was completed in February (MEES, 15 March). Partners include: Austria’s OMV Gas and Power, which is leading the project; Hungary’s MOL; Romania’s Transgaz; Bulgaria’s Bulgarian Energy Holding; Turkey’s Botas; and Germany’s RWE Supply and Trading. OMV and RWE have formed the Caspian Energy Company, which is examining ways to export Caspian region gas to Europe. OMV and MOL are minority partners in the Khor Mor and Chemchemal gasfields in Iraqi Kurdistan, where further development of Khor Mor has stalled (MEES, 19 April). RWE is beginning to explore Turkmenistan’s offshore Block 23 with a view to developing the block’s natural gas potential (MEES, April 26, April 19).

Nabucco Gas Pipeline Project Construction

  

 Source: Nabucco Gas Pipeline Int. GmbH

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